IUCAA-led international team discovers 6-minute white dwarf binary eRASSU J0608
An IUCAA-led international team studied an ultracompact binary system, eRASSU J0608, where two white dwarfs whip around each other every 6 minutes, making it among the fastest known pairs of its kind.
Their discovery just got published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Chirp mass 0.43 million, possible accretion
These stars are spiraling closer together thanks to gravitational waves (basically ripples in space-time), and their estimated chirp mass is about 0.43 times the mass of the Sun, placing eRASSU J0608 among the higher mass systems known in this class.
The way material from one star may be flowing directly onto the surface of its companion makes them even more unique.
Scientists say eRASSU J0608 could help us understand gravitational waves better, and they're excited to keep studying it.
As lead author Rahul Sharma, a post-doctoral fellow at IUCAA, puts it, "The system is spiraling inward exceptionally quickly even compared with other extreme binaries, making such systems important laboratories for studying a fleeting phase in the evolution of compact stellar binaries."